


Care and Feeding

by femme4jack, fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Domesticus [3]
Category: Transformers, Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Angst, Dystopia, Electricity, Fisting, Foursome, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Non Consensual, Philosophy, Sex Addiction, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme4jack/pseuds/femme4jack, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homo sapiens domesticus: care and feeding </p><p>Like any organics, Homo sapiens domesticus specimens require specialized fuel, atmosphere, and temperature ranges; however they are among the easiest organics to maintain on Cybertron.  Fuel cubes are available at nominal cost.  Unadulterated dihydrogen oxide must always be provided in liquid phase, but a proper enclosure is designed to purify and recycle approximately 97 percent of this water.  Humans may be kept in groups of three or more; attempting to maintain a single human by itself is not recommended.</p><p> ---</p><p>Perceptor glanced at the fuel he had been absently swirling in his cube, and had yet to even sip. "You have studied philosophy, Shockwave. Tell me what makes a person sentient."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Warning: Xeno, noncon, fisting, anal, slavery, suggestions of bestiality because of Cybertronian views on sentience, suggests sexual addiction, penetration of human with hardline cable**

Homo sapiens domesticus: care and feeding

Like any organics, Homo sapiens domesticus specimens require specialized fuel, atmosphere, and temperature ranges; however they are among the easiest organics to maintain on Cybertron. Fuel cubes are available at nominal cost. Unadulterated dihydrogen oxide must always be provided in liquid phase, but a proper enclosure is designed to purify and recycle approximately 97 percent of this water. Humans may be kept in groups of three or more; attempting to maintain a single human by itself is not recommended.

\----

 

 

Perceptor had just solved the transdimensional fallacy that had been plaguing his latest experiment when the hatch of his chambers buzzed.

Which was unusual. Perceptor had no visitors scheduled for the next thirty-seven orn. Most mecha knew better than to seek him out at his quarters, rather than in the laboratory. But that last explosion had been somewhat traumatic, and the medics had suggested -- well, ordered, really -- a full twelve orn of rest and self-repair, before they’d discharged Perceptor from the medical facilities. And Perceptor intended to comply! For at least the first orn. Maybe even two; he had enough equipment and projects in his quarters to keep him occupied for that long. But the laboratory interns were already coming up with such lovely data....

Getting to the front hatch required some navigating around a disassembled topological invariant modulator, but at last Perceptor managed to key the doorway.

“Delivery for Perceptor,” intoned the bored transport-mech, with a darkened cube in his hands. “Imprint designation here, please.”

Perceptor blinked. “What?” he asked, dutifully inscribing the file and returning it. A courier. How very unusual. What had Perceptor ordered that could not be brought by standard transport dro--

\--oh.

“Oh dear,” murmured Perceptor, hastily backing into the room and clearing several half-completed black hole generating assemblies off his largest workspace. “Do set them here, if you please.”

The courier raised a brow ridge, then did as directed. Facial plates wrinkled as he stepped over a nuclear resonance imager casing -- presently being used to hold down a copy of an ancient treatise inscribed on metalmesh -- the delivery mech placed the cube of humans on Perceptor’s desk. Then he keyed the walls of the cube to clear, just as they’d been the last time Perceptor had seen the little organics.

“Care n’ feeding’s contained in the datapacket,” the transport-mech grunted, as he pulled another cube from subspace -- this one filled with human fuel, wax, assorted tools and odd objects, and more of those folded cloths -- and handed it to Perceptor. “Have a nice orn,” he said, and departed.

“Indubitably, sir -- but could you tell me....” The hatch closed behind the courier.

And then it was just Perceptor and the three organics. Alone. In his quarters.

Uhm.

A quick scan revealed that the datapacket contained a list of some two hundred commands to which the organics would respond, along with instructions on how to program a standard vocalizer to make such sounds. Perceptor examined the list more carefully, running the purported glyphs through a pattern analysis program, even as he modified his vocalizer as recommended. All of the sounds, it appeared, were probably produced by squeezing air over tautly-held membranes, along with certain movements involving the glossa, dente and jaw struts. Much like, he supposed, a wind instrument, in which atmosphere was ventilated over finely strung wires and thin plates. How very strange.

He focussed all of his optics and his imaging scope in on the three organics, who were staring back at him. He felt sure that one of them was looking at him belligerently, while the other two seemed more fearful. That was, if their non-verbal cues mimicked those of mechs as closely as he presumed. The lack of proper fields made interpretation difficult enough. They also did not have armor to flare or clamp down, nor any sensory structures to twitch in a tell-tale manner. They did have auditory cups of some sort, but seemed disinclined to move them in any indicative manner.

Even though he'd committed the list of commands to data-storage, he found himself reviewing it yet again, in hopes that it would give him a clue as to what to do. Things did not seem nearly so clear without several cubes of Tower Iacon's best high grade in his systems and the elegant Mirage being so very... Mirage.

At least the instructions contained the humans’ required environmental ranges -- Perceptor examined those, and then reset the temperature in his quarters.

The one who had appeared belligerent made a series of noises, seemingly directed at him. Perceptor recognized two of them from the command list, 'stand' and 'there'.

An interesting piece of data, to be sure -- it appeared that the human lingua contained more glyphs than just the commands Perceptor had received. The scientist carefully modulated his vocalizer, tuning it to mimic one of the unknown sounds the human made.

“Fucker,” Perceptor hazarded.

His attempt seemed to be incorrect, to judge by the foremost human’s agitated response, which consisted of a great deal of arm-waving and more tapping of its fist against the cage’s clear surface. Fascinating. But perhaps Perceptor should begin with the list of commands he’d been given.

“Sit,” offered Perceptor. As expected, the two in back folded their pedes beneath them and knelt down. The one in front, however, raised the middle digit of both its fists, and brandished its hands.

How utterly enthralling. Perceptor tilted his helm, watching the front human proceed to engage in vigorous arm-waving. It spoke a great deal, mostly in glyphs Perceptor did not recognize. Perhaps this one was the trine leader equivalent? One might hypothesize that the organics had a social order, of some kind. Many of the front human’s arm gestures, Perceptor realized after a moment, were directed at the large storage cube sitting nearby.

Curious, Perceptor disengaged the force field above the cage with a line of code, then reached in. None of the humans attempted to escape him, though the first continued to make its mainly-indecipherable sounds and wave a fist with just one digit sticking up. Hoping he had not caused the human to suffer a glitch of its hand tensors, Perceptor carefully picked up the first human, set it down outside its cage, and then tipped the cube of sundry supplies onto its side, uncertain as to which of its contents the little creature wanted.

The human fell silent, and stood unmoving, staring at the tipped-over cube. Concerned that it had somehow gone offline, Perceptor lightly reached out to touch the organic with the tip of a digit. Upon catching sight of Perceptor’s approaching finger, however, the human reared back, smacking the metal with its own soft-hided manipulating digits and baring its--dentae?

Perceptor was not sure that those flat, tiny white calcium protrusions could be properly called dentae, but he supposed the term would have to suffice for the moment. The human was vocalizing again, twisting its mobile face into different contortions, dentae flashing; it was impossible to be sure, but Perceptor could only guess that perhaps he had violated some aspect of its training. Did humans require some manner of appeasement rituals before being touched? The instruction data packet was shockingly inadequate in this inquiry. He had not seen Mirage use any rituals, however, Perceptor had been given so little time to study the creatures’ interactions ….

Still, he did not wish to make the organic glitch by forcing it to violate its coding, especially not before he’d had a chance to make proper baseline observations! Perceptor withdrew, reaching instead into the cube of supplies, separating out the different objects--small cloths, fuel cubes, other organic-sized tools and supplies--into piles. Then he tapped a digit upon the tabletop next to the supplies, and gestured at the organic, attempting to indicate that the creature could choose what it wanted. It would be interesting to see what the human would take, if left to its own devices -- or failing that, at least he could examine the basics of its cognitive abilities.

The human circled wide, warily, and approached the tumbled heaps of miniature objects. Standing where it could both watch Perceptor and reach the cubes of fuel, the creature seized one in its small hands, and used its buccal cavity to break off a chunk. Masticating it, as if the fuel were a chunk of raw energon crystal, the human circled back over to the wall of the cage, where the other two humans still knelt. Then it hurled the cube up and over the edge.

Perceptor cycled his tertiary optics in surprise. His primaries remained trained on the two kneeling humans as they scrambled to their pedes and broke the cube in half between them, and began to devour it. His secondaries tracked the first human as it went back for more fuel to throw over the edge.

So they were social creatures, after all! Fascinated, Perceptor watched as a second and then a third cube went flying over the edge. Concerned that the humans might not be able to regulate their own fuel intake, Perceptor nearly stopped the belligerent organic from flinging a fourth cube, then realized that the pair within the cage were hurrying to hide the subsequent cubes under sheets of metalmesh, in the corner furthest away from the water source.

After tossing a dozen cubes of fuel over the barrier, the first organic began to dig through the other piles. And then one of the still-confined humans tapped on its cage, albeit more lightly than had the first. It appeared to be looking at Perceptor. Bending its kneejoints, it jumped up -- managing only to rise a third of its height at best, far shy of the edge of the barrier. Then it tapped the glass again.

Curious to see more of their social behavior, Perceptor placed his hand in the tank and held it flat, finger-digits curved slightly upward. Would the creatures get into his hand without a command, or would he simply need to pick it up? The one with the light colored helm fur approached and stepped carefully into his hand, sitting down in his palm and grasping onto a digit. The other, the one Perceptor had interfaced with in such a spectacularly novel manner, hung back, slowly moving toward the opposite side of the tank.

The yellow-furred one on his hand scooted to one side, crowding up against his fingers and clearing a space. It made a series of noises -- warbles, fricatives, musical little hissing stops, all of which seemed to mean something to the dark-furred one. Hesitantly, it came a little closer.

Perceptor held himself quite still, for several klicks. And then, at last, the dark-furred one seated itself gingerly next to the other one, tiny hands gripping his plating.

Amazing. Carefully lifting the pair out of their tank, Perceptor queued up and downloaded files of organic studies. More than a few organics had language, of course, and many hive-species were quite intelligent. But did any have personalities -- for lack of a better glyph -- like this? Their resemblance to mech behavior was uncanny, almost eerie. Had they simply observed and learned to mimic the mecha around them?

Perceptor set the pair next to the third human, and they disembarked, then went eagerly to dig through the mounds of supplies, chattering to one another in their instrument-like voices. Reflexively, Perceptor began cataloguing and archiving their vocalizations. The Kreem had a vastly complex social structure, yes, but did not seek to interact with or make use of other species, as the human in the tank had when it wanted out. Gilasharks could be trained, but didn’t have such a range of abilities as these humans seemed to. Alya were intelligent, but would ignore a trapped comrade. Skuxxoids, Omya... none of them behaved like this.

One of the humans found a small metal device with tiny blades attached, and exclaimed in apparent pleasure. Then it turned to its companion, and began to shear the other’s shaggy fur to a neat length, leaving little clumps of keratin fiber on Perceptor’s desk.

Perceptor watched it all avidly. Once all three had completed the fur-shearing ritual, the calmest human found a tiny cube of surfactant, and approached Perceptor again. Optics wide, he shuttled it back into its tank, where it stood under its water nozzle and scrubbed itself vigorously, the surfactant forming suds and bubbles on its hide.

Cooperative social behaviors! As well as an obvious ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and at least a basic grasp of problem-solving--no wonder these organics had proved so adept at their Towers-trained function! Perceptor continued to watch with fascinated delight as the first human completed its grooming while the other two went about re-arranging the environs on his desk, filing away each new observation, distracted by the joy of discovery.

This was _marvelous_. He really would have to remember to thank Mirage.

 

\---

 

“Hey, I forgot we had real towels. Throw me one?”

"Those are for polishing," Sam warned, giving the creepily staring mech a quick glance.

"Don't think it cares," Miles said, shaking the water out of his--now thankfully much shorter--hair. Not that he didn't rock the shaggy naked alien captive look. He just rocked the spiky-haired naked alien captive look *more.*

"Fucking creepy bug-eyed fucker. Don't even know whether to fucking polish it, " Trent muttered from where he was sorting through the supplies. He grabbed a bath-sheet sized chamois and flung it irritably toward Miles, but the fabric hit the top edge of the cage and fluttered back down to the platform.

"See?" Miles said in triumph as the alien picked up the chamois carefully between two of its spindly, multi-jointed fingers and dropped it inside, making some sort of chittering sound softly to itself. "Dude is a softy. Gonna let us do anything."

Sam somehow doubted that. He hadn’t been able to walk right for a couple days after he'd first met this 'softy'. And he fucking hated that thinking about that made his cock twitch and get harder. Just his luck, the alien would notice and assume he was ready for round two... or twenty, depending on how the hell you counted the first round.

"I'm gonna polish it," Miles suddenly announced, the towel thrown over his shoulders, waving his arms at the robot to get its attention. It chittered again and reached in.

"Why the fuck would you do anything until it gives an order, moron?" Trent abruptly stood, pacing back and forth.

"Just a feeling," Miles said, his feet swinging back and forth from where they dangled from the alien's hand. While still five feet above the table, Miles pushed off with his hands and jumped down, giving the alien a little wave after he staggered and caught his feet. "Besides, what else do we have to do?"

“God. You’re like a golden retriever,” Sam said, scrubbing his fingers through his much-neatened hair.

“I always liked dogs,” Miles said wistfully, as he went to dig through the supplies. There were more of all kinds of things in the big storage cube than could even fit in the cage -- not if they wanted room to move around in, anyway. The surface of the desk, or table, or whatever, was big as the backyard of the place where his family used to live, maybe almost a quarter of an acre, laid out in a long, narrow rectangle. It felt really, really good to have some space to stretch his legs.

There were some other weird things pushed to one side of the table, like the sculptures outside museums, except with a whole lot more parts. This room was around the size of the other one, about a football field. But while the other room was all fancy, with those weird trees in boxes and scary floating jellyfish, this one looked like the alien actually lived here. There were shelves with various boxes, more parts and sculptures on the floor, and two big doorways that looked like they led to other places. He could see lights moving across a huge black screen, at least forty feet tall and almost the whole length of one wall. Could that be a window? Under it were structures laid out to look a lot like couches or seating, made of the same silvery mesh stuff as the bottom of the cage. A huge white space, covered with weird scrawls and alien glyphs, reminded him of a whiteboard. Kinda made him want to go exploring, though he doubted the alien would allow that.

“More like a really stupid golden retriever,” Trent corrected, turning hard on his heel. The scissors caught his eye, and he sized up the alien. Then, growling, he took up pacing once more, turning so he could always keep the robot in sight. Thing might in fact be soft, but that didn’t mean four-inch hair shears would do him any good against it. He scratched at the skin around the metal breathing thing. Fucking nose piece was irritating. ‘Course, being without it was worse.

“I wonder if this is like being rescued from the pound,” Miles said, triumphantly lifting a cube of the paste wax overhead. Amazing, how much better a meal and a shower -- with real soap! -- made him feel. “Maybe it’s like that black one, you remember? Only wanted a waxing?”

“Trust me, that’s not all it wants,” said Sam darkly.

Miles shot Sam a sympathetic glance, and then shrugged. "I'd rather polish them when I'm not being ordered to. Remember when we used to want to do this?" Back on Earth, working on the mechs had always... felt good. It felt good to feel the individual plates go from rough and gritty to tingling and silky-smooth under his hands, to hear those sounds of obvious enjoyment as they cleaned grease from the parts they could reach beneath. Mechs were always the perfect temperature -- cool on hot days, warm on cold ones. Miles especially liked it when they purred.

It wasn’t really purring, of course. But when they were clean and happy, the aliens just... vibrated slightly, like a high-performance engine at idle, like a cat, or like... touching a balloon that had a lot of static electricity on it. Miles didn’t really have a way to describe it. But whatever the mechs were doing -- it made the fingers tingle. Made other places tingle too.

It’d seemed natural, after the first few mechs, to just scrub and wax everything they could reach, so when mechs had started handing those cable things down to the humans, they’d polished those too. It quickly became obvious that the mechs enjoyed that... a very great deal. The trainers said it was a cultural ritual that was expected of Cybertronian detailers. Uh huh. Whatever. Some volunteers left when they realized they were effectively giving the aliens hand jobs. But not many. Those who weren't willing to go boldly where no man had gone before were washed out of the program in the first weeks anyhow. And there was no denying that the good tingly feels only got better when they worked the wax into that particular component.

The oral? Well someone at their training center had come up with that one himself, and had tried it on a dare. And when he became an instant mech favorite, always carried around like some spoiled lap dog, and the credits sent to his family doubled? Well... most of the recruits were not willing to be outdone. From there, it had become a competition of sorts -- for credits, favor, luxury foods and more of those happy purring sensations.

Miles and Sam had once quietly wondered, later, if it had been some human in a training center who'd first come up with the idea that was forced on them later, after they endured that horrible sorting and plug. Perhaps it had been someone's bright idea, in that same spirit of outdoing one another. Though how anyone with a sliver of sanity would *want* something that big and heavy inside of him...

Miles shivered a little, the usual mixture of horror and lust shooting up his spine and cock when he thought about it. He shook himself and grabbed a dry cloth, then waved at the alien. "Hey dude, wanna lie down for this somewhere, or what?"

The alien chittered and seemed to perk up at Miles's words. "Lie down," it repeated, then “lie-down-or-what?” with a lilt at the end that made it a question, spoken in the same cadence Miles had used.

Miles froze for a moment, unsure whether he should lie down right there. Usually the aliens just pushed them down, even when they also gave the command. However, this one made no move pin Miles against the table. "Yeah, you, six eyes... or seven if I count the scope thing. I'm gonna polish you now." He pointed toward the scorched-looking streaks on its plating that hadn't been there the last time they'd seen it. "You... um.... look like you need it. You wanna lie down?"

The alien made some of its squealing, buzzing noises, and then a platform emerged from one of the walls near the window-screen thing. "Polish? Now. Lie down?" it said again, gesturing to the platform and then holding out its cupped hands for Miles.

"Fucking insane dipshit," Trent muttered, grabbing a stack of cloths and stalking over to the waiting hands. Sam muttered something similar under his breath, and grabbed a cloth and a second cube of wax. It wasn't like they could let Miles go over there alone to be raped. Not if they had a choice. Even if he was being a complete idiot.

The thing moved slowly, almost gingerly over to the platform, cradling all three humans against its chest with both hands. From this vantage point, they could all see that the alien had suffered rather extensive damage in the week or two since they’d seen it. Burnt streaks radiated across most of its front. Some had an almost-bubbling look, as though the metal was blistered, flecks of it sloughing off in places. The edges of some plates were chipped, or had little spiderweb cracks through the paint. The robot carefully deposited them on the platform, and took a step back, staring with its bug eyes, all of them independently blinking, cycling, and constantly refocusing on them.

"Lie down?" it said again.

"Yeah," Miles answered, nodding. "You, lie down, here," he replied, pointing to the platform.

“Yeah,” said the mech, in an eerie copy of Miles’s voice. Moving carefully, obviously trying to avoid crushing them with any of its oddly jointed components, the mech chittered again and sat, then settled itself onto the platform on its back, one of the eye-things on the side of its head regarding them intensely. It was around midsized for an alien -- somewhat over twenty feet or so from foot to the top of its head, but much more stoutly built than any human. Lying back like this, its chest was fully five feet thick, and probably ten feet wide.

Miles didn't waste a moment, but hoisted himself onto the alien's arm and made his way to one of the scorched sections of plating along its red and slate-blue chest. "This hurt?" he asked, scooping up a handful of the wax and rubbing a little in experimentally.

"Why the fuck should you care if you hurt it?" Trent asked, sounding nauseated.

"Because it might crush him in pain reflex," Sam snapped back.

The alien seemed to tense for a moment, its armor flexing slightly, but then it let out what could only be described as an mechanical sigh and a long, high chirring sound. It was one they all knew well from their training. The mech was clearly pleased.

"Come on," Sam said, grabbing his own cloth and climbing up to join Miles.

"You two'd better not bitch at me when this goes *exactly* where it always does," Trent muttered as he climbed, wanting to kick at the burnt plating as those deceptively-good tingles started radiating up through his feet.

 

\------

 

Perceptor hadn't intended for the humans to wax him. His plan was to passively monitor the humans' behavior, to draw conclusions untainted by his own actions -- to the greatest extent possible, anyway. But denying the organics’ requests would change their observable behaviors as well, wouldn’t it? And the little creatures had been so skilled, the last time....

Perceptor shuddered a vent as the warmed wax began to seep into his injured places. As good as the substance felt on undamaged plating, it was a balm on cracks and fissures. A handful of pain flags popped up and then just vanished, as efficiently as if a medic had blocked the damage codes. The parts didn’t report back fully functioning, of course, the injuries were still there... but they felt distant, easily ignored. Even a spray of tailored nanite assemblers, applied by a medic, didn’t feel quite like this -- so soothing, easing.

And apparently, the wax was conducive to actually repairing the damage, as well. Perceptor watched with wide optics as the dark-furred human called out, and then the others clustered close to examine one of the many charred marks on his plating. They traced curious, wiggly little fingers over the waxed surface of a minor and lightly-burned piece of armor, measuring the change in color as Perceptor’s chromatic nanites slowly infiltrated back into the damaged segment. Then they all scooped more handfuls of wax and went to work on his injuries, cleverly prioritizing those plates.

The creatures were simply incredibly skilled at their function. Those tiny, knowledgeable hands reached down at least as deep into Perceptor’s subsystems as any maintenance drone could. Being maintained by a drone was quicker, but was also a dull experience, metal clicking on internal metal, scraping over protometal. The humans’ hands, however, were enchantingly soft and just as thorough, almost... almost like being touched by protometal or metalogel, albeit without the accompanying electrical input. Perceptor swapped threads, assigning the task of recording all of the humans’ vocalizations and actions for later analysis to a secondary bank of processors, freeing his primary threads to simply enjoy this experience.

Twice, the smaller yellow-furred one urged him over onto one side, so it could attend to the plating on his back -- as he did so, Perceptor added “roll over” to his list of commands. Every time their soft flesh brushed up against the unguarded sensor-cilia beneath a panel was a teasing torment. Not nearly enough to trigger an overload -- not without the addition of a field surging with his own, but still a novel and exquisitely pleasurable input.

Within a joor, Perceptor’s charge had built to point where the need for release was beginning to outweigh any other concerns, even scientific ones. His very spark felt as though it were buzzing with charge, surges washing through him as the humans wiggled their way ever-deeper into his components, polishing the undersides of panels he configured as loosely as possible for their convenience.

Perhaps... perhaps he might simply extend the module, but say nothing. Yes, that certainly would provide for a fascinating set of observations. Would the humans initiate the same behaviors without the commands Mirage had given? And would they do so because of their conditioning, or -- as he found himself increasingly wondering -- out of some form of proto-sapience?

His primary interface array was located under his thoracic plating, a device intended as a preliminary hook-up in preparation for the highly intimate act of spark sharing. It was slightly larger in configuration than the ones on his wrists, but still within the humans’ acceptable port capacity parameters, according to the file of instructions. This array was also even more sensitive, simply due to the thousands of nano-filaments that led from it directly to his spark chamber and protometal core. It was also the most convenient array for the most relaxed of the creatures to access -- if it desired to.

Perceptor signalled the cover to spiral open, and allowed the plug to configure and extend, bathing the smallest organic in the radiance of the lightbars. Primary interfaces tended to be more artistic in configuration, and subject to both the whims of fashion and the deeper traditions of spark sharing. The lightbars were laid out in fine spirals and whorls that echoed the glyphs for unity and pleasure. They were Perceptor's nod to those traditions -- conservative and timeless in their elegance.

At the quiet sound of the component emerging, all three humans froze in their tasks, and began rapidly firing their mixture of melodic and guttural noises at one another. Did 'fucking', 'fucktard', 'fuckwad' and 'fucker' all construe modifiers on the same glyph, Perceptor wondered?

The smaller of the yellow-furred organics said something in a quiet, calming tone, and the largest one spat out another response, while the dark-furred one stiffened and went silently back to its polishing. It was tempting to assign them designation glyphs based on the observations he'd already made of their individual behaviors, but such a move would be premature and might impact his objectivity.

Not that his objectivity wasn't already being impacted. Especially as the human who seemed the friendliest climbed over the spread plating, took up the interface plug, and began to expertly rub the organic wax into Perceptor's connector.

 

\---

 

Sam watched Miles out of the corner of his eye as he worked on his own area distractedly. There was no denying the Miles was... particularly good at this part. So uninhibited, so much the golden retriever. He'd never been embarrassed to admit that he enjoyed it, that he liked the mechs back then, on Earth. They had liked him too. He'd always been a favorite at the training center.

But back then, they’d never had to do what was coming next. Watching Miles crouched there, on the panel beneath those open sheets of armor, Sam could think of nothing else. The alien’s thing was huge, bigger than the ones at its wrists. Wider and -- Christ -- just as long, if not more. The tip was blunt, almost flat, without the tapering that sometimes made it... easier. Miles seemed undeterred, kneeling down with it between his legs, kissing and nibbling on the tip as we worked wax into the rest of it, as if he didn’t realize where it was going to fucking go. Miles had a way of living in the moment. Sam wasn’t sure if that had kept him the most sane of the three of them, or whether he was just the most messed up.

Miles pulled a little on the cord, to unspool it -- with effort, because even the smaller plugs were fucking heavy and the big ones were like a cement brick -- and bent down to stretch his mouth as much over the tip as it would go. With him holding it like that, the glowing cable coiling between his knees, it looked like the full length of the plug would fill him past his navel, to his bottom set of ribs, an impossible depth. And getting it out again... God. It might turn him practically inside out, if the alien pulled on the cable too much.

The aliens had only used their centermost plug on them a few times. Once on Sam, a few times on Trent, before he’d fought so much they’d pinned him down and unfolded the pincers and knives and the cauterising welder. But Miles was slightly smaller than either of them, and this time, the blue mech wasn’t here. Sam hated the thing, but at least the blue alien knew how far they could be pushed, knew what not to do to them. Did this one? If Miles ended up badly hurt -- they had no medical supplies. Not that Sam would know what to do for injuries like that, even if they did.

Then the alien reached over to Miles, like it wanted to take the rod from his hands. Just like Trent had said it would.

And Sam knew -- all too well -- what came next. Even after everything the aliens had done to them, even after being used like this for years, it still hurt. Even the smaller ones. That blunt tip, just forced in....

“Stop! Wait!” Miles and the alien both looked at him, the alien doing that creepy thing where one of its pairs of eyes focused on him and the others stayed on Trent and Miles. He cringed. It’d be just his luck if the alien objected, and this little interruption ended up costing him his balls. “I’ll... I’ll do it. I mean, I’ll help... put it in him. Please. Just, don’t....”

“Stop? Yeah.” said the alien, as Sam climbed over to where Miles knelt cradling the plug. Slippery and very heavy, it was hard to grasp, and all the mechs reacted poorly if you dropped one of the things. Miles held it so that the base rested against his cock, which was erect and weeping, rubbing over the metal and the smooth raised lines of glowing color.

Sam crouched down beside his friend. “Are you sure?” Sam whispered. “I could....” he wasn’t sure what he could do. Let the alien put it in him, instead? Just the thought of that, of having that happen to him again, made him nauseous.

Sam glanced at Trent. He was seething, working on the plating on the alien's leg with ferocious intensity. Trent seemed to feel his gaze and looked up, glaring daggers at him. "You two are so fucked up. That thing didn't even tell him to. And now you're going to help it fuck him?"

Miles removed one of his hands from the plug just long enough to touch Sam's, bringing his attention back, and bravely shook his head. Choosing the time and place was his own small way of taking back some control. Sam got that, even if Trent couldn't. “You survived it. I’ll be fine. I... I guess I could use some more lube, though.”

Yeah. It’d been at least three weeks since an alien had selected Miles. Normally, they were all pretty slick inside. But the wax didn’t last forever. Sam nodded. “On your side?” he suggested, pulling the cube of wax closer to where he needed it.

Miles complied, curling his body so that he could support the plug with one knee and arm, licking and nipping at the tip, even as he pushed his hips against the base. The rising charge from the solid length of warm metal, and the plating under his body, made his hair crackle, unbelievably arousing even when the alien wasn’t inside him. He shivered a little as Sam coated his fist thickly with the wax, and then sank two fingers into his ass, followed easily by another two, pushing the lubricant deep.

Miles spread his knees for easier access, even as he did the scraping thing with his teeth that mechs liked so much. Too bad the ends weren’t more tapered.... it wouldn’t be easy, then, but at least the first and last parts might not hurt quite so much. He winced a little as Sam scissored his fingers open, withdrew them, returned with more lube. Miles glanced up, found that the alien had lifted and tilted its big shoulder-mounted eye-tube to watch both of them avidly.

 

\----

 

It was all Perceptor could do to keep his fingers from clenching right through the metal mesh of the berth surface. Stunned, he watched the dark-furred human draw his slick hand from the other human’s port -- and then reach for his connector, taking it up with apparent effort. The yellow-furred human rolled over onto its back, and spread its legs, wet little opening waiting for the plug.

Perceptor sucked in a vent as the dark-furred human cradled his connector jack, tracing its soft little fingers over the glyphs inscribed there. Each touch flushed new charge through his capacitors. And then, kneeling, the darker human pressed the tip of his plug to the rim of the golden-furred human’s port. Perceptor shuddered, just quaking under the weight of the two tiny humans. Like before, it felt almost as if there was no port at all for him. It was even better with this more sensitive datajack -- he could feel the little creature’s port fluttering against him, could feel every variation of heat and the slickness.

In his daze of pleasure, Perceptor could not even find a category with which to label the cooperative social behavior confronting him. Indeed, it was difficult to process any of it properly -- between the scientific joy of observing novel behaviors and this incredible bliss. Why would the dark-furred human put so much attention into preparing the other's port for interface, but for Perceptor's cable rather than its own fleshy appendage? Did the dark-furred one have some sort of specific function it was trained in that was not elucidated in the instructions? Or perhaps some sort of bond with the yellow-furred one that went beyond the expected animal mating behaviors? If so, then on what basis? The humans were uniquely sensitive to electromagnetic pulses. Perhaps, even unsparked as they were, they could form some type of proto-bond based on those fields that flared so vividly with the proper stimulation.

He needed more data, for none of this made any sense.

The glyphs coiled across Perceptor’s connector brightened still more, flaring blue-white. And then the dark-furred human began to ease him in -- into the other one, heat just pressing open for him. The process was slow, tantalizingly so, so much slower than when Mirage had done that task. It allowed him to catalog every tiny change of pressure, slickness and heat, every flutter and twitch, every reaction from the human, down to the most minute detail.

The smallest organic was venting harshly, vibrating finely on his plating, and Perceptor’s chemoreceptors belatedly catalogued a myriad of new chemical secretions, acrid and salty and strange. The port flexed, gripping, and the dark-furred organic paused, making noises at his companion. Obviously an inquiry--a status-check, perhaps, he hazily thought--as the smaller one made another ‘yeah’ vocalization in reply, and the darker-furred organic continued his efforts. It was difficult going, the larger diameter of his central jack requiring more effort, that pink-flushed hide rolling and spasming under the press of metal.

And then the tip was inside. He was inside and it was exquisite--heat and clinging slickness and subtle vibrations drawing him in, even as the organic’s port squeezed down in reflexive resistance. It felt so, so good, Perceptor couldn’t help but wonder how Towerlings managed to retain any processing power at all, with such potent distractions so close at hand--

\--and why was the largest organic banging on his armor and shouting like that? Navigating his way up from a veritable cornucopia of exquisite sensory input, Perceptor fought to bring analytical coding back online, redirecting his focus back to encompass all three of the little creatures. The largest organic was making its finger-gestures again, alternating them with banging tiny soft fists upon his plating as it shouted and pointed--at the smallest organic? Who was oddly still, fingers clenching on his armor, almost rigid in its posture …. and Perceptor’s chemoreceptors reported changes in this organic’s secretions, significant differences when compared against his earlier encounter.

Something was not right. Even through the haze of delirious input, Perceptor's analytical streams flagged the incongruities. The apparent signs of distress that Mirage had dismissed were even more evident as the dark-furred human slowly pushed the tip in further. True, the organics’ participation in the ritual seemed to give credence to Mirage's assurances. Whether through training or natural coding, the creatures did seem to want to interface. But...

Perceptor matched the sounds the yellow-furred human was making with those it had emitted earlier, noting the lubricant streaming from its moist organic optics.

"Hurts... oh fuck... hurts... fuck stop..." the yellow-furred organic gasped. ‘Hurts’ was somewhat like ‘hurt’, the glyph the human had used when tentatively touching Perceptor's blast damage. And 'stop' was all too clear.

"Stop, yeah? Hurts," Perceptor repeated in the blond human's voice.

The dark-furred human froze. They both stared at him, their optics wide.

"Hurts?" Perceptor said again. He carefully reached for his plug, intending to remove it.

Both humans cringed, their motions so similar to those of mecha that Perceptor's ethical coding would not allow for any other explanation of the movement.

He pulled his hand back. "Hurts, yeah?" he repeated one more time, wondering if he was had misassigned that meaning of that glyph.

But then the dark-furred one responded. "Yeah it hurts. So fucking much."

Storing the rest of that phrase for further analysis, Perceptor swung his scope around. The humans did not seem to want him to remove his jack. Perhaps there was another option? The little port did seem to be evidencing strain; as Perceptor focussed down on the part in question, he could see the fine stretch marks in the keratin sheeting, the threatening fissures along the rim. The evidence correlated with his pain hypothesis, much to his dismay -- damaging the organics had certainly not been his intention!

An astrosecond’s analysis presented him with a solution. One, he had to confess, he was embarrassed not to have anticipated. It was often necessary to reconfigure cables when interfacing with different frametypes; not every class of mecha had the same ports, the same internal connectors, after all. It only made sense that organics were equally varied. Yet for all their flexibility, they obviously lacked the ability to manipulate their ports in a similar fashion. Which meant that they had to rely upon a mech to reconfigure his jack in order to ensure a proper--and pleasurable--socketing. How could he have not realized this before?

Perceptor looked down at the tensely waiting organics. He wanted to apologize, even though he realized how illogical that impulse was. Still, he could at least rectify his error. The small organic started, giving a short, sharp cry as Perceptor began to reconfigure the parameters of his jack, inside the confines of its body. The larger human renewed its posturing and shouting up at him. Perceptor ignored it, focused on the slow, delicate shifts, doing his best to move plating and rearrange internal connectors without pinching or tearing any of the creature’s fragile hide that surrounded his tip. Rounded surfaces were obviously preferable, he hypothesized--protruding ridges could catch and tear, even finely crafted ones. Tapering should be likewise beneficial. Without calipers to iris the port open to the proper diameter, the organic would likely prefer its internal walls expanded by degrees to lessen the strain. He transformed the plug, shifting the bulk of the connectors to the middle, smoothing and thinning the front to a relatively tiny conelike tip for easier insertion, and the rear cable-connection to another tapering, smooth-covered shape.

It was an odd configuration, and one that seemed inefficient in terms of the charge transmission necessary for proper interfacing. But the organics seemed to approve of the change, the small one relaxing minutely, one small hand reaching down to stroke his own soft-hided central digit, and the largest had ceased his shouts. Pleased, Perceptor tilted his helm and issued the glyph again, emphasizing the lilt at the end which, he hoped, made the glyph a query. “Hurts?”

“That’s... it’s better,” gasped the yellow-furred human, tensors not quite so trembling-tight now. The brown-furred one eased another row of glyphs inside the silken clench of the human’s body, and the penetrated one cried out, gasping, shaking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perceptor glanced at the fuel he had been absently swirling in his cube, and had yet to even sip. "You have studied philosophy, Shockwave. Tell me what makes a person sentient."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content: same as previous, angst, xeno foursome with lots of consent issues**

"Miles," Sam whispered, his own hands trembling where they held the massive plug, a third of its length sunk into his friend. The thing was now much smoother and tapered at both ends, but its sheer mass had not changed at all. "I think... it might stop if you ask it to. This thing is still huge. That widest part..."

Miles swallowed and licked his lips, gasping hard, trying desperately to relax. He craned his neck, trying to gauge the length impaling him, the frightening amount still outside. Then another pulse rocked him, raced through him, and he slumped back. Those waves, whatever the hell they were, made his ass squeeze hard and his cock twitch. Every fucking time. And they were nothing compared to what he knew was coming... once he took it all in.

He closed his eyes. "I don't want to stop," he admitted, his whole body flushing with the admission. Oh God, fuck, why did he need this so much? 

Trent shook his head, his fists tight, hands trembling. "Fucking loser," he grumbled, heaving himself up onto the alien’s chest. Then he knelt down beside Miles, and leaned down to kiss him hard, swallowing those panting gasps. Back pressed flat to the alien’s chest plating, Miles shuddered as another inch eased into him. And even as he stroked his own cock, Miles reached out -- and wrapped his fingers around the head of Trent’s. 

Trent trembled, hand fisted like he wanted to punch something, hips pushing into the touch. Then his hand unclenched, and he reached to stroke fingertips over Miles’ face and throat, soothing the shivering as Miles tried to relax himself around the girth of the jack. Trent hissed a little, canting himself closer as Miles’ wax-slick fingers curled around him, soft human touch ghosting over the head of his cock, the divot just beneath, the corona.

Trent responded... differently... than he once had. But he still responded. Like so many parts of his memory, his recollection of what it had once been like, before the cutting, was foggy. And Miles? Well, Miles was soft... almost feminine. If he didn't think too hard, and just let everything be a blur, he could almost pretend. Almost.

“Just lay down. Beside him,” Sam interjected quietly. “You don’t want him to do this alone, right? That’ll help. It will.” 

“What does it look like I’m doing? Dumbass,” Trent growled. And then... and then he did as he was told, stretching out beside Miles. Who responded, curling to fit himself against Trent’s larger body as best he could, clutching fingers curling over skin and scars alike, just desperate for human touch. Still quaking, Miles pushed his mouth and metal-covered nose against Trent’s collar and the curve of his throat, panting there, huddling, a little on his side. 

Wincing, Sam pressed a few more inches inside, steeling himself against the way Miles writhed for it, fought against it. And then Trent reached down, rocking the heel of his hand just lightly over Miles’ stomach, just over the subtle bulge where the thing inside distended him. Miles whined quietly, muscles spasming under Trent’s hand as he carefully worked the cramping from them. 

Weird, how something so intimate could seem so normal, now -- back in high school, Sam would have just killed anyone who implied he’d ever do something like this. It’d taken a year, here on the aliens’ planet, to get over the embarrassment of just being in a confined space with two other naked guys, having to watch them shower and piss, having no privacy. But somewhere in there, things had changed. Maybe around the time he’d brought water to Trent in his cupped hands, one sip at a time, when the jock was too hurt to move. Maybe the time Miles had brought his sheets of metal fabric close to Sam’s pile, and asked if he could climb in. Maybe the time Trent joined them, muttering that their shivering was keeping him the fuck awake and scoot over, dammit. 

Of course the three of them still snipped, and fought, and argued. But there was no longer any physical distance between them, nothing about their bodies that was truly off limits.

They had nothing else to share, after all. 

When Miles finally relaxed a little, Sam steadily pressed the thickest part of the alien’s plug inside him. The ridges and glyphs on the thing flared bright, the robot’s plating just alive with that tingling, swirling sensation, pulses so intense he could almost feel them, like a subtle pressure against his body. 

Miles tossed his head, breaking Trent’s probing kiss, cried out as the center of the datacable sank inside him. His teeth clenched in a grimace, tears welling in his eyes as he took it. The skin under Trent’s hand seemed lighter, and it took Sam a moment to realize that it was glowing, illuminated from within by the massive stretch of the glyph-textured plug. That faint, subtle line of luminescence sank deeper with every spasm of Miles’ body, penetrating to the core. 

Trent hissed as wax-slick fingers stroked him hard, then fell silent as Miles lifted his head for a kiss. Trent worked his hand down to where the connector broke Miles open, where the smaller body just stretched obscenely to take the thing. And stroked there, running his fingertips over the brilliant sigils, the smoothness of the metal, the tight-stretched place where the plug pressed in. 

Sam pressed again, and the light finally dimmed as the last of those lightbars slipped inside, leaving only the subtly glowing lines that decorated the cord. The grasping little ring of Miles’ ass seemed to draw the rest of the slick cone inside, finally clamping down tight around the cable that connected the plug to the alien. 

The alien, Sam realized then, was quaking almost as badly as Miles. The moving lightpattern of the cord quickened, and Miles squeezed his eyes shut. And then stiffened, and screamed, cock jerking as he came, helpless against the bliss, rolled under by utter abandon. Residual charge crackled through him, static popping from his skin where he lay close against the alien’s metal surface--and Trent shuddered as well, his spine bowing as sensation raced over his skin, leaping from every point of contact and back again, prickling and painful and wonderful. 

He’d never done this before, never been allowed out when one of the others was being used -- and it -- oh. Without any of the pain, and even muted through Miles’ body, this sensation was like a shot of heroin. Every cell seemed alive in some unfathomable way, each nerve blazing with *awareness*, leaving him outside himself while the lightning crackled around them. 

Trent had a bare moment to recover before the next pulse rocked them both. Caught up in his own ecstasy, Miles was shivering, clutching desperately at Trent’s arms, his back. And Trent let him, gritting his teeth against his own unwanted pleasure, letting Miles shake and cry in climax, stroking fingers over sweaty skin, down the distended flex of the other man’s abdomen. He tried not too hard to think about it, this perverse thing they’d all become addicted to, the way it made them feel--but the intense shame of his response to those devastating pulses was wiped away by the utter bliss. 

Maybe the other two had it easier. They, at least, could get off without too much trouble -- help take the edge off, at least. Took Trent a lot longer, after the fucking aliens had cut him. Had to be some kind of cosmic joke that the monsters still felt so damned good, when everything else felt so damned muffled, so distant. And this -- oh, God. 

A slick, silken grip closed around his cock during the next pulse, and Trent could no more stop himself from coming that he could have halted a train, the rotation of the planet he’d once called home. Riding the same wave, he cried out even as, between them, Miles screamed and thrashed in consuming pleasure.

Between them. Sam was curled on the other side of Miles, the three of them together on the alien’s chest. Trent tensed, fists clenching as the robot brought one hand, fingers spread, to cover them -- but it only seemed to want to touch, to cup lightly. Each of its nine spindly fingers was as thick as Trent’s leg, but its hand was warm. And then another pulse rocked through them all, and every thought beyond this hot golden haze just vanished. 

 

\-------

 

Perceptor lay in a smelted haze, his fingertips curled lightly over all three of the little humans, stroking the dried salt from their bodies, just feeling the softness of their fur. Pops of static still arced from his sides and back, shunted carefully away from the exhausted creatures. They had entered recharge, apparently, and Perceptor could hardly blame them. It’d been so good with Mirage, he’d not thought, could never have calculated... that it could be like this. His primary interface unit was far more sensitive than the tertiaries, and having all the humans together like this, watching their fields crest and interfere and merge as they magnified and echoed his pleasure.... oh, oh yes. He was going to have to replace his capacitors before long, at this rate -- to say nothing of what the medics would do if they saw him like this. He’d eat his microscope if he hadn’t cracked some of the struts they’d spent so much time welding back together. 

And now... now. What was he to do, now? He had to have more data, he had to know more. He’d have to contact databrokers, or perhaps even an investigator, and see what information could be obtained regarding these humans and their planet. Perceptor set a flag to ensure he’d do so, later. 

His chestplates were smeared with organic fluids, but that could wait -- a few moments in the shower racks would suffice. But as for the humans themselves... what was he to do with them?

One of the little organics stirred under his hand, squirming itself tighter against the one whose body still encompassed his datacable. They were so tiny -- and all his now, with their melodic, yet strangely deep little noises and curious searching fingers and the way they liked to sort through and examine everything. They were his, his to study, his for... doing this. Again. Later. Whenever he wanted. 

Perceptor stroked their close-cropped fur, and felt something in his spark hitch when one of the little organics stirred, and pressed its mouth and nose close against the warm metal of his hand. 

 

\------

 

"You seem unusually pensive today," Perceptor's colleague noted. They both had extensive, clade-sponsored laboratories in the same facility, and had developed the habit of fueling together mid-orn if both of them were able. Some of both scientists’ best ideas had come from collaberative musing over a cube of energon. 

"Hmm? I suppose I am," Perceptor glanced at the fuel he had been absently swirling in his cube, and had yet to even sip. "You have studied philosophy, Shockwave. Tell me what makes a person sentient."

Shockwave's extremely sensitive and large mono-optic cycled and refocused as he considered the question. "An intriguing question. While sapience -- the ability to apply judgement -- is common throughout the empire, sentience is not. Sentience entails more than cognitive ability, more even than wisdom. The traditional view has long been that a spark is required for true sentience."

"Yet some forms of Cybertronian life have a proto-spark, and we do not consider them to be sentient," Perceptor countered.

"True. Though they lack a true spark chamber, they do exhibit a diffuse, spark-like energy. None of the schools of thought, even the most avant-garde, have proposed that technimals are sentient, however. Even the most intelligent of the creatures are merely clever animals." Some mecha, Shockwave was fully aware, were physically patterned after technimals -- but as they had a sparkchamber and a proper field, they too were fully sentient. Surface modeling was merely cosmetic. The spark was everything. 

"And what of organic life?" Perceptor asked. He swirled his cube again, and then took a sip, allowing it to linger in the capillaries of his glossa to appreciate the unusually fine grade. Perceptor had recently remitted a new invention to Tower Iacon, and the clade had made their appreciation plain with a rather large gift of the fine energon. 

"Some organics can possess a high level of intelligence," Shockwave considered, his armor flaring a bit and settling. "But intelligence does not equate with sentience, as you well know. Their intelligence is comparable to that of a drone. One cannot argue that they truly operate beyond the parameters of their own organic coding. Now, Forceblade and his laboratory recently proved that environment and random change may alter organic code in an evolutionary process over time, but an individual organic cannot do so. A sparked being, even one without any prior coding abilities, is able to change and manipulate their own code in moments, based on the impulses of their spark."

"Didn't the Kir-Le'di manipulate their own code?"

"Ah, true, but they had already crossed the technorganic threshold and clearly had a recognizable spark-like energy, at least on the part of the hive-queen."

Perceptor's optics dimmed as he considered Shockwave's explanation. None of it was new. He had heard such reasoning ever since Cybertronians had come into closer contact with organic species in the beginning of the expansion, and had never before had reason to question it. The pax Cybertronia, in its beneficence, granted even non-sparked a great many rights -- too many, said some. Prime's decrees protected organic species and their worlds from certain forms of exploitation, and even made allowances for enforceable trade compacts with those organics possessed of the intelligence to engage in commerce. Those directives had been difficult for many mecha to swallow, at first -- particularly in the wake of Cybertron’s devastating war against the Tr!klcctch. But none had dared to cross *this* ascendant Prime -- and in truth, the organic restrictions had proved surprisingly beneficial for Cybertron. 

But no one, it seemed, seriously argued that organic life had the same right to freedom and self determination as sparked mecha. Such creatures were simply were not capable of the kind of self-transformation which those with sparks could achieve. 

Perceptor thought on the way the Miles-human had sat in his palm and chattered away, naming each object in its cube of supplies, while the other two surreptitiously built a tiny staircase out of food blocks and smaller storage cubes, via which to ferry items into their cage. "I wonder sometimes if we are not blinded by the light of our sparks," Perceptor said quietly. 

Shockwave focussed in on Perceptor intently, his specialized optical sensors reading the disquiet of his colleague’s field on an exacting visual level. "There was one explorer mech -- not a philosopher, mind you, but a xenobiologist -- who recently postulated that some organic lifeforms should be considered sentient. He proposed that some, though they could not alter themselves, did effect a great deal of change on their surroundings, even in a single ephemeral lifetime. 

“Normally the short span of an organic’s existence, rarely more than a handful of vorn, is considered another argument against their ability to achieve true sentience. But the xenobiologist’s essay proposed the opposite -- the very fact that an organic could impact so much around itself in such a minute fraction of time was an argument for sentience.” 

Perceptor thought of one human, the taller one, which had protested vigorously when he attempted to designate it its favorite word, and instead preferred the term ‘Trent.’ The Trent-human always set about organizing and moving things immediately upon being removed from its shared tank. Everything it came across, it explored thoroughly -- and then tried to move if it could, or climb if it couldn’t. Perceptor still had yet to fathom why the creature had appropriated a reinforcing pin from one of his transwarp modulators for ‘barbell curls.’ He’d have to ask one of the interns to fetch a new one from requisitions, because Perceptor certainly wasn’t going to take the Trent-human’s favorite new plaything away. “One might counterargue,” he said slowly, “that organics which alter their environments... do so simply because they’re coded for such functions.” 

Shockwave nodded. “And thus you have identified the vast hole in the essay’s hypothesis, and the reason it will never be published in a reputable journal,” he agreed.

“Nevertheless,” said Perceptor, “I should very much like to see that essay. When you have a moment.” A chill washed over his plating. He’d returned the humans to their cage, and checked their water and ‘food’ before he left for his laboratory for the orn. He’d been a little shocked, then, at how hard it was to leave the creature for such a short time, given that he’d just spent his full eight orn of medic-mandated recovery with them. They had so much food secreted away, Perceptor could have left them safely for ten times as long, for Primus’ sake! But if his humans were hard-coded to explore and modify their surroundings, what of their tiny cube of a cage? Did confining the humans prevent them from performing one of their preferred functions? 

The thought that a creature with explorer-coding, such as himself, might be trapped in such a tiny, blank space.... he had to see them. Had to check on them. Could they make any use at all of sparkling toys, he wondered? 

“Of course, I...” Shockwave started, then tilted his helm as Perceptor stood abruptly, stuttered an excuse, and departed as if his laboratory was on fire -- so quickly he even forgot his cube of fuel. Shockwave recalibrated his optic, leaned back to watch Perceptor push his way out to the roadway, and there fold himself down onto four wheels and speed away. 

By the Allspark. Reflexively, Shockwave pinged one of Perceptor’s interns -- who, with nothing more than a slightly-annoyed air, reported no emergency. Shockwave thought for a few clock cycles, parsing through his companion’s strange behavior, his line of questioning... and how remarkably clean and shined the other scientist had appeared, despite his trauma of scarcely eight orns ago. “...I’ll just bring it by, shall I?” Shockwave said quietly, to the empty air. 

 

\----

 

His subspace bulging with sparkling playthings, Perceptor looked around the entrance to his quarters in dismay. His plans, hastily assembled while he purchased one of every single device which seemed suitable, no longer seemed so inspired. How could he even consider letting the humans roam free in such a potentially dangerous environment? Why, simply the fall off his desk could damage one beyond repair! 

What if he kept them on the floor? But even that posed hazards. The ventilation grill was wide enough for one to fall through. There were gaps in his furnishings large enough for them to fit in, and potentially become lost or injured in the spaces between the walls, where he could not reach them. Not to mention the sheer number of items he had scattered around his primary living space that could potentially be harmful. Organic creatures were quite sensitive to various forms of radioactive decay, weren't they? And many chemicals could damage them on a cellular level. Indeed, the list of chemicals for which the humans were *approved* was shockingly short -- the instructions stated that they should even wear a higher grade of breathing masks when working with powdered graphite, perhaps the most innocuous substance known to mecha. Graphite! 

No wonder the instructions did not advise allowing the organics to roam unsupervised outside of their enclosure. For the first time, Perceptor regretted that he did not maintain more grandly expansive quarters, as most of the other top-ranked scientists did. He’d never needed the room, and hardly ever saw the inside of this unit anyway. Why would he want to leave his laboratory and its beckoning mysteries? 

Could... he take the humans to his laboratory? Perceptor ran a quick search for the number of explosions, space-time displacements, and other potentially-dangerous events which occurred there frequently, and quickly discarded the notion. Nevertheless, he was determined to give the creatures more space in which they could interact and manipulate their environment. With a bit of time, he was certain he could design a larger enclosure for them. In the meantime... where to put them? The desk was not an option, unless he was there to catch one if its equilibrium suffered a glitch. 

Perhaps... he could keep them beneath his berth? Normally it was retracted within the wall when not in use, but it could be left extended. The space beneath was nearly twice as tall as the Miles-human, and six times the dimensions of the humans’ tank. He could erect some energy barriers around the base, perhaps extend them out along one wall in a long rectangle, and put their cage inside. He could cut a side entrance into the tank so they could enter and exit it without assistance. Yes, that would work nicely. 

“Salutations, directed unto three small hominids,” Perceptor announced, taking the few steps down the short entrance hallway to the main room. He’d muddled through the organics’ limited lexicon for almost two orn, before finally identifying a databroker who had the files he needed, derived from a Vosian explorer's scans of lexicographical objects from earth. Translating the scanned ‘dictionary’ had taken almost a full joor on a primary thread, but the language he’d discovered contained well over a hundred thousand terms. Perceptor’s organics protested when he used certain of the glyphs from it, deriding them as ‘weird.’ 

Perceptor felt his major fuel pump stutter and threaten to come to a halt. The cage on his workspace was empty. 

The pointed steel pin from Perceptor’s transwarp modulator was jammed straight through the top of the enclosure, interrupting the field generator there. Food cubes were piled up beneath the breach, little bare footprints imprinted in each of the blocks. Several long nuclear fuel rods -- presently inactive, thank Primus -- leaned up against the outside of the tank, forming a ladder. ‘Soft towels,’ tied into a long, knotted rope, dangled off the edge of the table. 

Oh Primus.

His organics were gone.

“Don’t go out there, dickweed,” hissed the Trent-human’s voice.

“Hey, let go! Uhm, hi.” The Miles-human wriggled its way out from underneath the guest seating chair. It scrubbed its hand through its thoroughly-dusty fur. “Sorry about the mess. We got bored.” 

Perceptor had to cycle his optics -- all of them -- as he focussed in on the area beneath the chair. Oh Primus, they had pulled apart the automatic picotiter fusion printer array that he had scooted beneath the chair for storage... and were... building something out of it? The pieces, along with the shaving and scrap it contained, were arranged in some sort of meaningful pattern. But the alloys in those shavings were full of mercury, not to mention at least a dozen other metals that were potential sources of harm. 

"Small hominids! Your keratin sheathing requires decontamination without delay!" Perceptor reached with one hand to pick up the Miles-human while his other delved under the chair to collect the others, knocking over their creation in the process. 

"Woah, woah! We were just playing Risk, you asshole!" the Trent-human protested, its tiny fists beating against Perceptor's hand as he attempted to pen it and the Sam-human in. 

“Exposure to contaminants is not advised, hominids. I command you to desist in making a game of such risks!” How could Perceptor ever leave them alone, knowing they engaged in such self-destructive behavior? It was enough to make him revise his estimations of their intelligence downward.

"Not that kind of risk," Miles explained, but Perceptor ignored the illogical statement for the moment, intent on grabbing the other two who were attempting to wriggle themselves more deeply into the wall conduit behind the chair where they had shoved the remainder of the printer.

Triumphant, Perceptor finally plucked the humans from the scrap they’d made of the delicate instrument, and hurried for the washracks, all the while the Trent-human continued to beat on his fingers. "Let go of us, you fucking dipshit!" 

“With apologies, you remain incorrect, Trent. Within this locus, there is no shit to dip. Now, if you will fully expose your keratin sheathing.” Perceptor plucked at the polishing cloth the Sam-human had been trying to wear around its waist in some sort of decorative fashion, as he entered the rhodium-tiled washracks.

“Skin,” corrected Sam, grabbing at the cloth as Perceptor hooked it away, then sighing as it went fluttering to the ground. “‘Keratin sheathing’ is seriously weird.” Sam folded his arms, mouth turned downwards in discontent. “Honestly--I’d give my right arm for a fucking pair of pants,” he said under his breath. Making some kind of a needle and thread was totally next on his list of priorities.

"Yes, yes," Perceptor agreed absently as he spat a line of code at the wall unit. The plumbing took a moment to cycle up the unusual request, but finally dihydrogen monoxide began to rain down, making all the humans yelp and squirm. 

Ignoring their protests regarding the relative chill of the solvent in comparison to the ambient temperature of the room, Perceptor focussed on keeping the tiny, squirming...and increasingly slippery! creatures in his hands, all the while scanning them to ascertain when all traces of the offending compounds were removed. Vector Sigma, he needed secondary manipulative limbs, like some had among the medic-class, just so he could safely hold and wash his humans. Which surfactant would be appropriate for their delicate keratin... skin...? And how was he to scrub them appropriately when it took all his digits simply to keep them in his grasp? 

With care, Perceptor set the Sam- and Trent-humans on the sculpted ledge along one wall, beside an assortment of brushes and scrubbing tools, many larger than they were. “Please sit, and refrain from defenestration,” Perceptor instructed, keeping one pair of optics on the organics to be certain they obeyed. The Miles-human had begun to shiver, and Perceptor set himself to scanning each of its limbs and rubbing at patches of clinging metaldust with his fingertips as gently as possible. 

“D-def-fenestration is only with w-windows," stuttered Miles.

“Can you please make the water warmer? He's turning blue,” begged Sam, crouching down away from the edge. 

“How do you even know that that word means? How the fuck does he know that?" Trent demanded of Miles and then Sam in an exasperated tone. Finding himself largely ignored, Trent set his back against a wall, and deliberately pushed a brush off the silvery metal tile, to clatter on the floor. "Look, it was just a game. We were going to clean everything up. You fucking left us alone with a crowbar for a whole fucking week. We were bored. What did you expect us to do?"

Perceptor felt a surge of shame at the accusation. It was as he'd thought. Organic creatures of such unusual intelligence needed a more stimulating environment with which to interact -- failure to provide one had very negative consequences.

"My apologies," Perceptor said sincerely, even as he continued to cleanse his smallest, and often friendliest human, increasing the temperature of his plating to help offset the chill. "The lowest heating setting associated with this solvent dispenser is far above the safety threshold for your species. As to your other concern, Trent, I sympathize with the need of any explorative species to have sufficient space and stimulation. In fact, I planned to move your enclosure to a more suitable location and provide you with thirty-seven assorted toys and baubles I purchased today for your edification. But I cannot adequately italicize and underline my glyphs when I state just how many hazards exist in my quarters for delicate organic hominids such as yourselves." 

"What's so dangerous about a bunch of metal scraps?" Sam asked.

“Metal scraps? Sam, the device you disassembled melts down and magnetically reforms a variety of soft metals -- including lead, mercury, and cadmium. Lead will inhibit the activity of your prophobilinogen synthase enzyme-nanites, causing ineffective heme synthesis and resultant anemia. Mercury will --”

“Propho-what?” Trent demanded as Perceptor set Miles on the ledge and picked up Sam for the same treatment. “And anyway, don’t need any fucking thirty seven baubles. Or any kind of a cage -- god. You think we haven’t had enough of that over the last, whatever, three-four years?” Trent set himself to pushing at another long metal scrubbing tool, attempting to shove it too over the edge. 

“I’ll s-second that. Except. W-what kind of toys?” asked Miles, huddling on the silvery ledge. Being here, actually holding a conversation with one of the aliens -- who had bizarrely gone from mastering sentences to putting together long-winded statements in, like, an hour all of a sudden -- still felt strange to him, even after a solid four months of having the big mech around. Four months as near as he could tell, anyway. This was all so different from the fancy room, the huge bed and everything that’d happened there. Miles still dreamed, sometimes, of having to go back there. They all did. 

“I shall explicate more fully, once you are all fully decontaminated and properly enclosed,” said Perceptor, picking up his smallest detailing brush, the one with the softest bristles. Calibrating pressure carefully, he attempted to use the brush on the Sam-human. 

“Ow, ow!” Sam protested, wriggling vigorously as the robot scrubbed at him. The places where his makeshift wrap had folded had collected a fair amount of the dust. “If you’d show us what to stay out of, we could -- ow!”

“Maybe you should fucking ‘enclose’ the dangerous things, instead of us,” growled Trent, finally succeeding in its efforts to jettison another brush off the ledge, leaning out to watch it clatter down onto the first one. 

Perceptor spat another line of code at the dispenser, adding what he hoped would be an appropriately mild surfactant as he considered the suggestion. There were just so many risks in his quarters, and the humans had already shown themselves to have very poor judgement when it came to self-preservation. 

But before he could respond, the Sam-human cried out sharply. "Stings! Oh fuck fuck fuck, my eyes! That stings!" 

"Get him the fuck out of there!" Trent immediately demanded, standing up precariously close to the edge even as Miles, too, stood and tottered. 

Perceptor instantly signalled the dispenser to return to the previous setting, while holding the Sam-human well out of the flow until the water ran clear, his other hand sweeping up guard the other two against falling. A keen caught in his vocalizer both at the shrill sounds of pain coming from Sam and analysis of the damage the other two could have sustained if they had fallen from that height. 

"You all must increase the diligence with which you safeguard and preserve yourselves! How could I even consider allowing you to roam my quarters freely?" Perceptor lamented as he put the Sam-human back under the flow in order to rinse its optics. "Even with the dangerous materials put away, I can calculate two thousand and thirty seven unique ways in which you could be injured or otherwise harmed!"

"Like you’re doing such a great job! What the fuck just happened to him, anyhow?" the Trent-human demanded, bruising its fists against his plating as it so often did.

Perceptor scanned the human in his hand carefully, noting the dilation of the capillaries in its optics and the flow of salinated lacrimal fluid from its optical ducts. The surfactant was not dangerous, but had obviously been irritating. Primus below, the creatures were delicate, and in need of constant protection. 

Perceptor suddenly felt at a loss. His humans needed more stimulation, but simultaneously, they clearly needed closer supervision. Were the sparkling toys as harmless as he assumed? What sort of risky play would the creative creatures engage in that he could not foresee or predict?

"Hey, big dude. You okay?" Miles suddenly asked, as though its single, limited wetware processor could possibly have noted the lapse of time during which Perceptor considered the complexity of the situation. 

"No, Miles, I am not remotely okay. I currently have forty-seven separate processing streams devoted to the myriad of ways in which I am both failing to adequately attend to your needs for stimulation and the multitude of scenarios in which you could be injured or harmed whilst in my care."

When... just when had Perceptor started confiding in unsparked organics?

"Maybe you should just fucking trust us," Trent spat back. "Not like we're not fucking grownups." 

"Dude, you could always just... you know... send us back home," Miles added thoughtfully. 

Perceptor’s threads came stumbling to a halt. He fell still, the water pattering off his armor and Sam’s shivering, soft-skinned body. Perceptor blinked, slowly, rebooting his optics, focussing them down on his three organics. Send them home? Back to their planet? Even... even the Miles-human? 

It was possible. Ships departed for that quadrant every orn or two, carrying light cargoes. The humans couldn’t go alone, as a shipment. Their biology alone made them enormously valuable, and their extensive training make them moreso. 

His quarters would be so empty without them. 

Something seemed to twist at his spark.

“I...” Perceptor started, feeling a very unaccustomed panic welling in his emotional pathways. What could possibly he say, to such a request as this? 

Perceptor’s entrance hatch chimed.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heya! What you kids wanna see next? Any ideas? --FS


End file.
